Friday, October 26, 2007

Doug Draper writes in his article that Ontario’s environment commissioner, Gord Miller, “noted that in the space of one year alone, between Sept. 2005 and Sept. 2006, residents in southern Ontario weathered seven severe storms”. Of what real evidentiary value is this arbitrary observation? What about between, let’s say, Sept. 2004-Sept. 2005? Or, what about between Sept. 2006-Sept. 2007 - how many fear-inspiring severe storms did our cowering populace suffer through in those arbitrary periods?

When Draper writes: “These type of storms seem to be occurring at a greater frequency and are part of what experts around the world have been predicting as one of the outcomes of climate change”, it is not clear whether Draper is attributing this paragraph to Miller, or is this Draper’s own observation? Is Draper channelling the ‘expert’ scriptures of that great bag of hot air, Al Gore? At least this paragraph used the disclaimer “seem” after “storms”; and the words “climate change” thankfully weren’t prefaced by the word 'anthropogenic'.

Not surprisingly, Draper's column just played friendly softball, or journalistic footsie, when it came to the views of champion fence-sitter, St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley.

Draper reported: "Miller said both ministries are trying to carry out their environmental reponsibilitieswith barely one per cent of the money the provincial government spends on all its programs". Yet Bradley's response, as typical and as predictable as if from a wind-up toy (to the probable delight of an avowed old lefty like Draper), was to trot out his obligatory straw man, Mike Harris.

Draper didn’t ask: “But, Mr. Bradley, your government had a majority for four years! Why are you only now, in this interview, saying you will be a “champion” for giving the ministries more money? Have you made public a timeline for this claim of yours? Also, since you have a budget surplus of some $2.3 billion, why hasn’t that already been allocated to ‘champion’, as you say, these ministries?”

Draper didn’t ask: “Mr. Bradley, if you value Kyoto as much as you purport, why did you and your Liberal party lie to Ontarians that you would close all coal-fired generating stations, including Nanticoke, by 2007? After all, wasn’t it your Liberals, and not some other candidate from the past, which had four years to follow through on your own promises?”

Draper didn’t ask: “Mr. Bradley, in opposition you repeatedly complained about deaths and asthmatic suffering from Nanticoke's emissions. Yet while you were breaking your promise to close the plant, for four years you didn’t even bother to at least help the situation by installing scrubbers. Doesn’t that virtually make you a champion hypocrite, sir?”

Draper didn’t mention that recently, Miller’s own commission harshly criticized Bradley’s government, giving the Grits a failing grade for enforcement funding; or that in 2006, the Sierra Club gave the Liberals an ‘F’ on climate change; or that in 2007, even Greenpeace called the Liberal's meagre climate change funding “laughable’.

With typical Liberal duplicity, good ole Jim Bradley rhetorically says one thing, does another: he talks green, enacts so-called green laws, but doesn’t actually put up the green to enforce these rules.

While an admiring press fawns over Bradley, perhaps this story's headline (Time to tackle the climate problem) can be interpreted that the “problem" we need to "tackle" is actually the problem of Liberal hypocrisy, from both Dalton McGuinty and Stephane Bumbledore Dion.